Chance-based System Project Brainstorm

Potential Sources of Chance

Slit-scanning video

Motion detection

Crowd proximity (I'd need stereo or a kinect)

Filesystem

Twitter / other social media with a public API / graph

I've been thinking about dataviz and about project with really long experiences for the audience. Often I'm getting caught up on the "how do you make it different from existing projects". 

I liked the Filesystem idea because it's both, and people would indirectly affect it, but it doesn't really make for much of an experience that can be seen by others. It's more like a screensaver, something that might be cool but would be privately appreciated. I do think it would be funny though to have a Filesystem TreeMapper that gave no useful feedback about the filesystem itself.

http://kdirstat.sourceforge.net/kdirstat.html#screen_shots

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Filesystem

http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap-history/index.shtml

It seems there are quite a few libraries for treemaps. The real trick would be making the resulting images chance-based but still retain the compelling aspects though...

Motion detection could get interesting. If so, I'd use oF or Processing, whichever had a more out of the box setup. I remember Thomas showed me a few libraries he used, I'll have to find them in my Github "starred" projects.

I'll probably save the kinect until I've got a little less pressure and a little more time.

There's been a lot of interesting stuff done already with slit-scan, so it might be more difficult to innovate

https://vimeo.com/7878518

http://seriss.com/people/erco/2001/

Forget social media. I'm embarrassed I even brought it up.

edit:

TreeMaps might take longer than I can afford to grok. Might be shelving the filesystem idea.

Chance-based Systems Project

Today I became aware of the Chance System project. I say "became aware" because the project was most definitely introduced Monday, but apparently the immediacy of it just didn't click in my brain until today. in class. right before crits.

To be honest, I'm pretty nervous about the actual project aspect of the course, mostly because this is my first foray into the "art" aspect of "generative art". Nonetheless, immersion in this project is the best thing for me; let research and brainstorming ensue.

Sources of Randomness

Being more familiar with the programming side of the class, naturally my mind drifted there for interesting sources of perceived randomness and chance. I like the idea of the audience of a piece being its source of input, especially if its indirect and furtive, and that fit in with the "chance" aspect well enough

Needing to get ideas flowing, I threw an idea out after class to Phil about using garbage values from C programs to parameterize some later form of art. I appreciated his frank, direct, genial criticism of the idea.

Critical Questions

1. Who is your audience?
2. How might/should/etc the audience interact with the piece?
3. Is the piece an interactive (i.e dynamic) or static experience.
4. Is the piece better realized through, or without, software?
5. What is the generative system (the part where I give up control over the work)?
6. Do I view the piece from an Art or Design perspective (i.e. process, product, purpose, experience)?
7. Is it important/crucial that the audience know the process, or is that process evident by the work itself?
8. Where and how is the aspect of "chance" introduced?

At first, all of these questions at once felt like my idea was being shot down, but my emotions will soon catch up with my reason and realize that's not the case. These questions form an excellent framework to help me explore a project idea.

Thankfully, Phil is as fond of "calendar time" as I am.

Hello World

Do androids dream of electric sheep?